Mr. John McKeon:

At the moment there is no right to request an oral hearing. This does not matter though because we allow people to request an oral hearing. In the regulations we are setting that out as a right. It does not necessarily mean that they will definitely get it. The appeals officer will still have to determine whether an oral hearing is necessary. However, if they decide it is not necessary they will have to explain why. In some cases, the appeals are very straightforward. They are on contributory schemes like invalidity pension, for example. If the person clearly does not have the contributions, there is no point in having an oral hearing about the matter. The appeals officers will have to use their discretion to make a decision. It is very important that people retain this discretion. I mentioned in my opening statement that we do not want our staff to be "jobsworths" who just apply the law and the bureaucracy. Like we expect gardaí to use a bit of common sense, we need our staff to apply common sense. It is important that people have discretion, so we are making those changes. We would hope that should speed up the process. At the moment, the appeals offices says that the Department takes from five to six weeks to return with information. In future, if we are not back within three weeks they can make the decision.